


Bedtime Story

by fuckityfardisgetinthetardis



Category: Fight Club (1999), Fight Club - All Media Types, Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk
Genre: Character Study, Gen, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-13
Updated: 2015-07-13
Packaged: 2018-04-09 03:34:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4332300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuckityfardisgetinthetardis/pseuds/fuckityfardisgetinthetardis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I can't sleep. So I think.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bedtime Story

**Author's Note:**

> This is set about a month prior to the narrator going to those therapy groups. I'm not sure what prompted me to write this other than I wanted to explore the narrator's personality more and try to get into his head.  
> From the narrator's POV.

Sleep, like death, is mostly involuntary. You can lie awake in your bed for as long as you please, but if it doesn’t decide to come for you, then it won’t.

Sleep hadn’t come for me in five months.

Neither had death.

Unfortunately.

 

You never realise just how long you sleep for until you stop getting it. Time seems to dilate when you’re doing fuck all but looking at the ceiling. Filling the void is hard to do. Most activities require being in the supine position, otherwise you’re cheating. You always hear about various methods of filling the void. Counting sheep for example. But no-one has fallen asleep counting sheep; it’s just a big fucking dud. I know that, and you know that, but you try it anyway. Was it 4357 or 4356? But then you may have made mistakes on the way up, so you just leave it altogether. 

I jerk off a couple of times, too. It’s meant to boost endorphins, lower blood pressure, yadda, yadda, yadda. This is supposed to make you sleep. What they don’t mention on the websites is that it gets your GÄSPA bedsheets all crusty, and that having to put them in your washing machine every morning runs your electric bill up the wall.

My washing machine is one of those “Life’s Good” ones, complete with the little winking logo.

 _“I know what you did last night,”_ it seems to say.

The only upside to insomnia is that it gives you time to think. With no sound from the outside world coming into my concrete lined habitat, I’m free to do that at least.

 

I think about my apartment a lot.

I really like my apartment.

I think about my Njurunda yin-yang coffee table. I think about how brilliantly spotless it is. Unused. It might as well be flatpacked in Aisle 22, Location 14 of the self-serving warehouse of the Wilmington IKEA.

I had never had to clean a coffee ring off it. 

I had never had coffee _on_ it.

But I had the black soapstone hexagonal West Elm coasters on standby. You know, just in case.

I think about the Rislampa/Har lamps. The ones made from the environmentally friendly unbleached paper.

God, I am such a good person.

I get nice lamps, and I save the planet.

Everybody wins.

 

I think about the Klipsk shelving unit. I didn’t have any books on there, but I _did_ have a basket weave bowl. The Pottery Barn webpage said it was handmade by a skilled craftsman. Didn’t give a name, though. Inside the bowl are some of those grey pebbles you see in IKEA market halls. Next to it is a white photo frame, with a picture of Aloe Vera inside. 

Everyone knows Aloe Vera is good for you. There’s a healthy smoothie stand at the mall that has an Aloe Vera drink. What most people don’t know is that the non-poisonous gel inside the thick and fleshy leaves is covered in a thin layer of Aloin and Anthraquinone c-glycoside, which are very toxic. If eaten in large enough quantities, they will cause abdominal cramping, nausea and vomiting, diarrhea and red urine.

It happened to my neighbour’s dog once.

I think about the things that I have, and I think about the things that I want.

Like the Moran coat rack, and the Cambria gravy boat, the Henley rug in Ivory and the Holtkotter low-voltage desk lamp.

When I look at my apartment, I feel a real sense of pride. They aren’t just objects; they’re a certificate of lifelong achievement from the esteemed school of Hard Work. It was all worth it. This is what it was all for. My college degree (not an Ivy one, mind you, but a decent one) and my shitty (but well paid) job afforded me a tangible reminder of just how far I’d come. 

It was great.

But sometimes, at around 3.00 AM, in the deathly silence of early morning, that time when the whole universe seems to be in some kind of opiate induced coma, I see things a little differently. If all that separates me from the bum outside these flats is my pension and social security number and the fact that FICA gets some of my money, then what was it all for? My credit cards and driver’s license and cheques make me better than him. I know it, and you know it. But you’re not supposed to say it out loud; it isn’t polite.

“I HAVE THESE AND YOU HAVEN’T”, I want to yell down at him from the windows. The safety-barred windows. The suicide-proofed windows.

“I HAVE THESE AND YOU HAVEN’T AND I’M BETTER THAN YOU IN EVERY CONCEIVABLE WAY. “

I want to scream these words until my throat is raw. I want to scream these words until they echo around the whole street, the whole town, the whole goddamn country.

Maybe that way I’ll start to believe them.

He might have three PhDs. He might be able to speak ten languages. He might be an autistic savant. 

He might even be a good person.

But that probably isn’t the case.

And the decent, upstanding, fully-functioning members of society wouldn’t be able to tell anyway, so it definitely didn’t matter.

My little yuppie world is made of the right atoms and numbers and words in the right place at the right time. A plastic and wood and chrome and silver and paper and ink and glass barricade. I am completely protected. 

**_I am in complete control and I am completely protected._ **

My Braun alarm clock begins to beep, that generic high pitched sound that’s currently present in houses all over the USA. It is 6.00 AM. I get up.

Rinse and repeat.


End file.
